


thine be the gladness

by patrokla



Series: but bid the strain be wild and deep [2]
Category: The Libertines
Genre: Bathroom Sex, Concussions, M/M, Semi-Public Sex, carl is a damsel in distress and pete Does Not know proper first aid procedures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-11
Updated: 2016-02-11
Packaged: 2018-05-19 19:02:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5977774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrokla/pseuds/patrokla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carl finally runs into Pete again. Things go somewhat awry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	thine be the gladness

**Author's Note:**

> I really don't know what to say about this. I wrote it about ten minutes after I wrote 'noises of joy', and wasn't planning on posting it until I'd finished the other stories, but that's not likely to happen. I'm not super happy with the quality of this, but I don't want it sitting around in notes for another 4 months, so. I'm definitely locking this in a bit. yikes.
> 
> Warnings: brief use of homophobic slurs (Carl's dad is a bit of a bastard), Americanisms here there n everywhere.
> 
> Don't do what Pete does if you think someone's got a concussion. Also, like...condoms, generally a good thing to use. 
> 
> Title from 'I Speak Not' etc by Byron, because using Byron's lines for this series seems appropriate. It's about the only appropriate thing in all this.

Carl doesn't exactly haunt the jazz club where he'd met Pete, but he does stop in every Friday night for a month before giving up on the place - it's fairly obvious that any charm it might've possessed existed only when Pete was there.   
  
‘You're sulking,' Lucie tells him over lunch on the day after the fourth Friday stop-in.   
  
‘'M not sulking,' he says, sulkily, and Lucie gives him a Look for all of two seconds before they both burst into laughter.   
  
‘Really, though,' Carl says after he's caught his breath, ‘I'm not sulking. I wish I'd seen him again, sure, but it's not the end of the world.'  
  
‘Yeah, alright,' Lucie says dismissively. ‘It's not like he's the first guy you've been hung up on in ages or anything.'  
  
‘I'm not _hung up on him_ ,' Carl says, mildly outraged.   
  
‘Sure,' Lucie says, and changes the subject to when he's going to visit Mum (soon, he promises, no, really) and Dad (only if he gets to punch him in the face, he says. 'Carl!' Lucie says, but he can tell she's pleased. Their father had not responded particularly well to the news that both of his children were ‘fucking queers', to put it mildly).   
  
The rest of lunch passes without incident, except when a very tall, lithe man with dark hair walks in the door of the restaurant and Carl whips around embarrassingly quickly just to confirm that it isn't Pete.  
  
Look, he's not hung up on him, alright?   
  
…but he did rather think he was going to see Pete again. It's been a month, though, and Carl's beginning to accept that any connection he'd imagined they'd had was just that: imagined.   
  
—  
  
So it's really just his luck when he runs into Pete in the loo of a nightclub in East London a week later.  
  
He's washing his hands in one of the sinks when the door swings open and a familiar-looking man walks in, but he makes himself not look over - he's had enough humiliation on the ‘looking for Pete everywhere he goes' front lately, he doesn't need to add tonight to the growing list.  
  
Or maybe he knows, subconsciously, and that's why he doesn't look over, so Pete has the opportunity to walk right up behind him and purr ‘Hey, Carlos' right into his ear.  
  
Then again he probably _doesn't_ know subconsciously, or maybe his subconscious is a bit pissed at Pete, because Carl immediately jumps back, startled, right into Pete, and elbows him in the process. They both tumble to the disgusting floor, Carl banging his head rather painfully on a stall leg as he goes down.  
  
‘Fuckin' hell, Carl,' Pete says, once the flailing and falling is over and they're both tangled together on the tiles. ‘Do you always meet people so violently or am I just a horrible exception?'  
  
‘Do you always sneak up on people in public toilets?' Carl retorts, because he'll be damned if he stays tongue-tied this time around.   
  
‘Yes, it's my favourite way to make new friends,' Pete says, slightly out of breath. Carl half believes him, too.  
  
They both lay there, panting in a way that brings up more than pleasant memories for Carl, until he finds he has to break the silence or risk blurting out something along the lines of ‘would you like to have sex again? with me? immediately?'  
  
‘Got a gig here tonight?'  
  
‘Not bloody likely,' Pete snorts, extricating himself and sitting up. ‘They go for DJs ‘round here, not proper bands. Nah, just here for the dancing. You?'  
  
‘I'm a DJ here, actually,' Carl says, straight faced, but he can only keep it up for a few seconds before he starts laughing, Pete following suit.   
  
‘God, can you imagine? Me, a DJ? It'd be awful, just awful,' Carl says, wincing internally at the thought.   
  
He sits up as Pete opens his mouth to say something, and then shuts it, looking alarmed.   
  
‘What?' Carl asks, confused.   
  
‘Carlos, you're bleeding just a bit from your head,' Pete says, moving closer and cupping Carl's jaw with one of his massive hands, turning his head to look at his apparent wound.  
  
‘Must've bashed it open on the stall,' Carl says as Pete's other hand moves his hair aside gently.   
  
‘You've got to keep an eye open for those things, never know when they'll jump you,' Pete murmurs, thumb absently running over Carl's cheek. ‘It's not bleeding too badly, but you did hit the door pretty hard…do you feel like you have a concussion, Carl?'  
  
‘What's that s'posed to feel like?' Carl asks, distracted by the closeness of Pete, a closeness he's been craving for over a month.   
  
‘Y'know, dizziness, seeing double, that sort of thing,' Pete says vaguely, taking a hand away that's sticky with traces of blood and licking it so quickly Carl almost misses it.  
  
‘Did you just…' he starts, but honestly Pete having a bit of a kink for blood, or possibly being a vampire, is - not a deal-breaker for him. Oh fuck, he's really desperate, isn't he?   
  
And a bit dizzy, now that he thinks about it.  
  
‘I'm not feeling 100 percent,' he admits, and Pete looks concerned. ‘Not seeing double, just a little woozy,' he adds hastily.   
  
‘Well we've got to keep you awake then, haven't we,' Pete says, and a mischievous expression crosses his face.   
  
Carl narrows his eyes in suspicion as Pete stands up, offering Carl a hand.   
  
‘What exactly is your plan?' he asks as Pete pulls him up and starts pushing him towards the open corner stall.   
  
‘Something along the lines of this,' Pete says, and he's barely got them both in the stall before he's locking it and sinking to his knees in front of Carl.  
  
Carl is very certain that this isn't proper medical procedure.  
  
He's even more certain that he doesn't care, that he's in fact utterly incapable of caring as Pete unzips his jeans and pulls them down along with his briefs.   
  
‘Alright?' Pete asks, looking up at him with wide, dark eyes, looking like a portrait of sin.   
  
‘Very,' Carl manages to say, and that's the last coherent thing he says for awhile, any potential words turned into moans as Pete takes his cock into his warm, wet mouth.   
  
He winds his hands into Pete's bird's-nest hair, improbably fluffy strands soft between his fingers, and somehow, ridiculously, a rare tender feeling curls in his chest at the intimacy somehow present in the situation.   
  
And then he looks down at Pete's lips stretched wide around him, at the dark fan of his eyelashes on pale skin, and the tenderness is buried under an avalanche of lust as it hits him - this is Pete, the Pete he's been looking for for weeks, the Pete he's seen in every store and every deliveryman at work, the Pete who haunts his thoughts. It's Pete, down on his knees, for _Carl_.   
  
Pete's clever, clever tongue knows all the right spots to lave and lick, one of his hands moving up to wrap around the base of Carl's cock, and it's all too much for Carl, too, too much.   
  
‘Pete,' he says, tugging gently on his hair, and Pete looks up at him and winks, and Carl's done for.   
  
‘Fuck, Pete,' he moans, and later he might be embarrassed about how fast it all happens, but look, he's walking wounded here and really, he dares anyone to see how long they last with Pete on his knees in front of them. It'd be too much for a man far stronger than Carl to take for long, of that he's sure.   
  
Pete turns and spits neatly into the toilet afterwards.   
  
‘Sorry,' he says as he gets up. ‘Can't stand the taste when I'm sober.'  
  
'S'fine,' Carl says, feeling dazed but still together enough to pull his jeans up and press Pete against the tiled wall, kissing him softly.   
  
‘Want me to…' he murmurs, and Pete shakes his head.   
  
‘I, um, already did. When I was…' he trails off, blushing slightly, and the tender feeling is back. Carl's only solution is to kiss Pete until his lips are as red as his cheeks, and so that's what he does.   
  
—  
  
It's only afterwards, as Pete bundles him into a cab and gives a little wave as the cab pulls away, that Carl realizes he's forgotten to get his last name or number once again.   
  
Also, he's got a head wound. But that's far less concerning, in the grand scheme of things.  
  
—  
  
‘Hey!' the cab driver shouts. ‘You're bleeding on the upholstery!'


End file.
